The Gold Coast

31

But time, of course, does not stop. And eventually they take the truck back to headquarters, and Xavier goes home.

Abe tracks to Sandy’s place, still feeling high. Into the endless party, and for once he’s in sync with the prevailing mood. There’s been a headline in the Los Angeles Times that morning:

and Sandy has therefore declared the day a local holiday. He and Angela have gone all out to decorate the ap, with balloons, ribbons, confetti, streamers, noisemakers, and big strips of paper that have the headline reproduced on them in various spectrum bends. Samples of every recreational drug known to science are on hand and in action, Sandy is in the kitchen singing along with the blender as it grinds up quantities of ice cream, chocolate sauce, milk, and, well, Abe isn’t too sure what else, but he has his suspicions. “Rnn rnn rnn, rnn rnn rnn!” Sandy sings, and grabs the blender from its base. He pours the frothy milkshakes into tall plastic glasses, handing them to whoever gets a hand out first, “Hey, drink this! Try this!” His pupils are flinching just inside the blue rims of the irises as he sees Abe and hands him a glass. Cold in the hand. Sandy uses the blender itself to clink a toast. “To the day’s work!” with that Sandy grin blazing at San Onofre–level megawatts. Now how did he know that his toast would be appropriate on this night of all nights? Another drug mystery. Abe drinks deep. No taste but chocolate, though it’s maybe a bit chunky. What might it be? He’ll soon find out. Best to establish a transitional period by lidding as much as possible.

A lot of people are already pretty stoned, they’ve got eyes like black holes and their mouths are stretched wide like they’re trying to do imitations of Sandy’s ordinary smile, they’re grinding their teeth and giggling a little and staring around like the walls have sprouted fantastic morphological formulations out of the usual condo cottage cheese ceilings, say, is that, could that be a, a stalactite there? Abe can only laugh. But Sandy splutters with dismay. “No zoning out here, this is a celebration, get on your feet!” People stare at him like he’s maybe part of the ceiling’s deformations. “Uh-oh. Jim! Jim! Jim—put something inspiring on the CD.”

Happily Jim hurries to the collection of tattered old CDs, bought in boxfuls by Sandy and Angela at swap meets, no idea what’s in the boxes, a perfect situation for Jim, who is in heaven bopping from box to box and rooting around. Abe laughs again, lidding from an eyedropper of the Buzz and feeling his spine begin to radiate energy. Jim, King of the Culturevultures. Hopping birdlike box to box, talking as fast as he can to people who clearly aren’t understanding a word he says. Head still as a bird’s, snapping instantaneously from position to position just like a finch’s, except that now Abe sees a kind of after-image of Jim, trailing behind him. A hallucinogen, eh? Fine by Abe. He can’t help laughing at his good friend Jim, who would no doubt look for the perfect music till dawn; but Sandy returns and grabs him by the elbow. “Now, huh? Desperate need for music now!”

Jim nods, his face suddenly twisted with nervousness. They’re really going to play his choice? What if he has gone off on some spiral of reasoning that has led him to a completely stupid choice, he can’t be at all sure that he hasn’t! Abe can read all this perfectly in Jim’s comically exaggerated expression of alarm, and he starts laughing hysterically. Jim trails Sandy to the CD player changing his mind, trying to get more time to think it over, but Sandy beats him away with one arm while inserting the CD with the other, and suddenly the speakers are roaring out some big symphonic fanfare. What’s this?

“‘Pomp and Circumstance’!” Jim shouts at Sandy and Abe, scowling with desperate uncertainty. Sandy grins, nods, turns the volume up so that the people on Catalina can enjoy it too. Then the march begins and Sandy high-steps around the rooms of the ap, leaning over to scream in the face of anyone who has remained sitting. Soon everyone’s up and marching like toy soldiers with scrambled circuits, banging into walls and knocking over plants and each other. Abe marches behind Jim and feels the dust in the blood begin to fly in him, the dumb old march has somehow acquired this immense majesty, now everyone’s out on the balcony, marching: twenty drum majors, a can-can line over by the railing, goose-steppers trying some kick-boxing.… Abe jumps up and down in place, feeling the glory of pure Being surge all through him. Incredible rush of exhilaration, face to the stars, it’s clear tonight and up there on the fuzzy black vault of the night are the big fast satellites, the solar panels in their polar orbits, the microwave transmitters, the ballistic missile mirrors to the north—all the new artificial constellations, swimming around up there and nearly blocking out the little old twinkly stars. And planes falling onto John Wayne Airport like space stations landing, like fireflies in formation: what an amazing sky! Abe leans all the way back and howls. Coyote’s entrance, here, the others take it up, and they howl and yip at the blinking night sky.

Angela, always first in these things, pulls off her blouse and throws it on the floor of the balcony, in the middle of the marchers. Bra next. Can she get her jeans off while doing the can-can? In a manner of speaking. Howls scale the sky. Clothes begin to fly onto the pile, a flurry of shirts, pants, blouses, silk underwear, boxer shorts. Quickly they’re a ring of naked dancers, as in some pagan rite of spring, they can all feel it and for once it has that quality of primitive sensuousness, no all-American tits-n-ass consciousness in Abe tonight, it’s just the clean joy of having a body, of being able to dance, of Being and Becoming. The way the pink of skin jumps out of the night’s smeary darkness is just part of the joy of it. Freckled Sandy tosses all the couch cushions in the ap onto the big pile of clothing, and then he dives on, swims into the pile, ah-ha, a pile-on here. Naked Humphrey is dancing wallet in hand, can’t just throw that in a pile of other people’s clothes, right? Abe starts howling again, laughing and howling, he can’t get over how good everything feels, how happy every face looks to him, there’s Jim happy, Sandy happy, Angela happy, Tashi and Erica happy, Humphrey happy, all of them dancing in a circle and howling at the sky, Abe dives into the great mass of clothes and people and cushions, clean laundry smell, he’s buried, he’s coming up for air, coming up to be born, like the baby he helped bring into the world just hours before—born out of their clothes, naked, shocked at the pure glossy presence of things, their sensuous reality, their there-ness. For the second time that night Abe Bernard squeezes shut his eyes and wills the moment to stop, to stop while he and all his friends are happy, to stop, stop, stop, stop, stop.